Cillian Murphy, Bradley Cooper and More Oscar-Nominated Actors Discuss Playing Conflicted Characters
variety.comTomris Laffly There is a pivotal scene in Greta Gerwig’s dust-pink “Barbie” that has come to define the Oscar-nominated movie — a disarmingly truthful monologue that is not delivered by the film’s many Barbies, nor its numerous Kens.
Instead, supporting actress Oscar nominee America Ferrera’s Gloria crisply sums up the movie’s themes around a picture-perfect doll confronted by the real-world, patriarchy-fueled challenges of womanhood. “You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining.
It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory,” she bursts out as part of her longer speech on the impossible expectations so many women navigate every day. “It was very freeing as an actor to let the words lead me from take to take,” Ferrera tells Variety, about tapping into Gloria’s headspace. “Greta gave me so much freedom and a lot of time to explore different versions of the monologue.
I had a lot of fun doing it and felt a real catharsis.” Ferrera wanted Gloria to feel alive with imagination and adventure, while making sure her real-world anxieties and disappointments were still at the core of her humanity. “For me, Gloria’s ability to abandon disbelief was rooted in her childhood experiences.
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